Sept. 20, 2008. We have an exit strategy.

Several years ago, the Dean of my medical school was killed trekking in Nepal by a heavy fall of snow. The story was that it just accumulated on the tents and suffocated the group. The snow that fell overnight was not nearly that heavy, and we had good 3-4 season tents. Nonetheless, I found the night a little scary due to the unrelenting snow. From my skiing background, I am a little paranoid about situations in which there is massive snow accumulation on upper, unseen (and unseeable) slopes. Just walking in valley bottoms can be unsafe in some conditions. We had moderately heavy snow and could expect a warm-up given the time of year, but at least it was not windy, so that upper slopes were probably not heavily wind-loaded. This was one of a few interesting times on the trek that, for me anyway, the line between making indepedent decisions regarding one's own safety, versus just relaxing and relying on our leaders to sort everything out, was tested a little. As I lay in the tent I recalled bad judgements I had made in the mountains, for example triggering a wet snow avalanche this June on Mount Rainier by insisting on hitting a steep pitch on a hot day a week after a 2 foot dump. At the end of the day you have to always keep thinking.

I periodically shook the snow off my tent and did not sleep too much. On at least 2 occasions, Joel and our Indian staff also personally shook the new snow off and also dug trenches around the tents to relieve any local obstruction of airflow. They really were on top of things throughout this snowstorm and the entire trek. By the morning there was about 12 inches of fresh snow, with ongoing precipitation.


We packed up camp and got going down-valley to Hankar. L.C. broke trail in the deep snow and steered a very safe course; he's probably been this way 20 times. We saw no evidence of big slides. We needed to make a final decision there about heading back uphill to Nimaling and a final 5200 meter pass, which featured a steep far-side descent, versus a long but safe exit down the Markha valley to Chilling on the Zanskar river. Maybe an hour out of camp, I managed to miss a rock during a river hop and face-plant into a 6-inch deep river. The irony was, my feet didn't even get wet, but I did bang up my left knee and was stunned into a depressed silence for awhile. Joel asked me what I thought about the route choice and I could only reply that I was not doing a lot of thinking. We did spot some impressive groups of blue sheep on the left-hand hillsides, apparently driven down from the high country by the weather. As we dropped, the snow got gradually less deep and we started to meet a few local people. One told of waist-deep snow at Nimaling, and this seemed to tip the final judgement towards the Markha valley exit. We continued downhill in easier terrain, past more and more signs of habitation, and passed through the village of Hankar. There is an impressive ruined fort above Hankar but no one had the energy to go up there. We continued down to Umlung and actually camped at a set camping area with a toilet building. There was a parachute cafe at which refreshments were again obtained for the evening for the pleasure of the usual suspects. Things were getting a little loud in the dining tent an a suggestion to quiet down was met with a spirited reply.

We later received some additional information about the effects of this snowstorm. It did close the Leh-Manali highway, a not unusual event for September. We heard rumors of some bad outcomes for "cyclists" on the highway but I don't have any independent confirmation of this. We did run into several groups in the Markha valley who basically changed their minds about continuing over a pass, turned around and re-traced their steps to exit at Chilling. We don't know if the French group we met below the Zalung Karpo La, having a sit-down lunch in their dining tent, ended up going up and over or not.